Terms of Service

Last updated August 28, 2026

What Predicate is

Predicate is a private prediction market for one small group of friends. Members propose claims about the future, trade contracts on them with each other, and a judge rules each claim YES or NO when it resolves. The site keeps score. That is the whole of it.

"The operator" below means the person running this instance — the same person who invited you.

Access is by invitation only

Sign-up is restricted at the identity provider: an email address that has not been invited cannot create an account, and an account with no membership in the group sees nothing but a notice telling it to ask the admin. You may not share your account or let anyone else trade under your name, and you must be old enough where you live to agree to these terms.

No money, and nothing staked

Predicate never touches money. There is no deposit, no withdrawal, no balance, no payment processing, and nothing of value is put up to enter a market. Prices are quoted in cents because whole cents are easy to reason about, not because anyone is holding funds. Nothing here is a wager: no consideration is paid to participate, and the operator takes no fee, rake, or cut of anything.

Obligations between members are social

When a market resolves, the site works out who owes whom and records it on the ledger. Those entries are a memo of a friendly arrangement between the two members named. They are not debts owed to the operator, the operator is not a party to them, and the operator does not collect, guarantee, escrow, transfer, or enforce them. Members settle between themselves — cash, Venmo, beer, whatever they like — and the creditor marks it received in the app. If someone never pays, the only consequence the software offers is that the entry stays on the ledger where everyone can see it.

Do not put anything on this ledger that you would mind losing entirely to a friend who forgets.

Judge rulings are final within the app

Every market names a judge when it is proposed. The judge rules the claim against the criteria written at proposal time. Members may object during the dispute window and the judge may revise the ruling; when the window closes, the market settles and the ledger entries are written. Within this application that ruling is final. There is no appeal to the operator, who does not adjudicate claims, review rulings, or reverse a settlement on request. Where the app allows it — a judge who has gone silent past the backstop date — the admin may rule in the judge's place, and that ruling is final on the same terms. Argue with your judge, not with the software.

The admin runs the group

One member is the group admin. The admin may invite people, set exposure caps, adjust the timing windows, reassign a judge, and remove members. Removing a member does not erase their ledger entries — outstanding obligations survive removal by design, because losing the record of who owes whom is worse than keeping a stale row. The admin is a friend of yours, not a company. Treat the arrangement accordingly.

Conduct

Do not propose claims that turn on a private person's personal misfortune. Do not use another member's account, try to break the market's accounting, or hammer the API with automated traffic. The admin can remove you from the group, and that is the whole of the disciplinary process.

Provided as-is

This is a hobby project run for a handful of people. It is provided as-is, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including any warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, availability, or accuracy. It will have bugs. It will go down. Data may be lost. To the fullest extent the law allows, the operator is not liable for any damages arising out of your use of it — including lost data, a mis-scored market, or an obligation another member never pays. If that is not acceptable to you, the right move is not to use it.

Changes

These terms may change, and the date at the top moves when they do. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept it. If you would rather not, ask the admin to remove your account — see the privacy page for what that does and does not delete.